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Frame from BBC: Spaghetti-Harvest in Ticino | Switzerland Tourism Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

BBC: Spaghetti-Harvest in Ticino | Switzerland Tourism

Switzerland
Comedy
YouTube
1 HN user recommended this comedy video1 month2016–2023 score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN uses it mostly as a joke reference whenever pasta, harvests or April Fools pranks come up, and a few recommend it as a perfectly executed hoax.

The 1957 BBC Panorama April Fools' hoax report showing a Swiss family harvesting spaghetti from trees, republished by Switzerland Tourism. It is a short deadpan newsreel clip with a plummy narrator that famously fooled viewers who knew little about pasta.

“Come for the legendary and perfectly executed hoax. Stay for the plummy accent.” (HN, 2023)

1 recommendations · 3 citations · 7 jokes · Comedy

11 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@tomcam Jan 2023 Recommends
on HN thread Spaghetti-Tree Hoax
Actual vid at [this video] . Come for the legendary and perfectly executed hoax. Stay for the plummy accent. Then watch for bad news on the North Carolina marshmallow harvest, probably inspired by it: [link]
Legendary BBC spaghetti-tree hoax, perfectly executed

Citations, criticism and jokes

@jdietrich Jan 2018 Cites it
on HN thread Who the Hell Uses Onion Juice?
See the BBC's legendary spaghetti tree hoax from April Fool's Day, 1957. A lot of viewers really were taken in by the idea that spaghetti grew on trees. [link] [this video]
@DoctorOetker Jan 2019 Cites it
on HN thread Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)
Correct, the BBC has a long tradition of presenting a fake documentary clip on April Fool's day. Not sure if it was the first one, but you can find a very old BBC April 1st clip on the "traditional yearly harvesting of spaghetti", where you see villagers pick fresh and ripe spaghetti from the spaghetti trees, carefully laying them in the baskets they carry... Not sure if this is the best clip: [this video]
@kwhitefoot Mar 2019 Cites it
on HN thread Microsoft bans April's fools pranks
> Everyone hates April Fools’ Day No they don't, they just hate harmful pranks. There have been some splendid April Fools. How about the BBC Spaghetti harvest from 1957, [this video]
@Graham24 Jun 2016 Makes a joke
on HN thread Lenin was a mushroom
That's up there with the great spaghetti tree hoax: [this video] "The last two weeks of March are an anxious time for the spaghetti farmer..."
@radiorental Jun 2016 Makes a joke
on HN thread Lenin was a mushroom
Let us not forget the exceptional spaghetti harvest of 1957 [this video] Thanks, in part, to an unusual lull in population numbers of the notorious Spaghetti Weevil.
@sritrisna Jan 2019 Makes a joke
on HN thread Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)
I know we're talking about penguins here, but watching the BBC video made me remember a flat mate at uni who told me about the BCC covering the Spaghetti-Harvest in Ticino. (Yes that's right. Spagehtti-Harvest.) He was really disappointed to learn later in life that 'Spaghetti don't grow on trees'. [this video]
@blakesterz Aug 2021 Makes a joke
on HN thread The wild pizzas of southern Italy
Read more
That headline reminded me of the old BBC prank: [this video] The spaghetti tree hoax is a famous 3-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools' Day 1957 by the BBC current affairs programme Panorama. It told a tale of a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from the fictitious spaghetti tree, broadcast at a time when this Italian dish was not widely eaten in the UK and some Britons were unaware that spaghetti is a pasta made from wheat flour and water. Hundreds of viewers phoned into the BBC, either to say the story was not true, or wondering about it, with some even asking how to grow their own spaghetti trees. Decades later CNN called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled." Or the Pizza Farm from Funny or Die! [link]
@agarren Jan 2023 Makes a joke
on HN thread Spaghetti-Tree Hoax
BBC reporting on the spaghetti harvest. [this video] It’s a family affair in Switzerland, unlike “large spaghetti plantations” in Italy.
@_joel Dec 2023 Makes a joke
on HN thread IP over Spaghetti (2019)
It's a bad situation with over farming in some areas since the 50's[1], I'm glad to see the spaghetti reserves are returning. [this video]

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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